


Nevermore

by Witete



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: (character death as in those who've been dusted so its kinda okay), Angst, Anxiety, Bittersweet Ending, Blood and Injury, Character Death, Crash Landing, Depression, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Major Character Injury, Medical Procedures, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, bc motherfucking peter quill, music references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-05
Updated: 2018-09-05
Packaged: 2019-07-07 03:56:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15900402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Witete/pseuds/Witete
Summary: A crow caws, somewhere in the universe, begging Earth's defender to come home.Lenore awaits, iron soldier.





	Nevermore

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this behemoth in literally two weeks. I don't know how.  
> Also, I still intend to write that 3+1 fic; she's just taking some time.  
> Stay tuned!  
> (everyone is probably ooc so i apologize in advance djskghskg)

                He’s aware of a voice that’s pulling on the back of his head, itching the base of his skull with its low, monotonous hum. Its soothing, distantly, but he’s bolted to the red sand, caught between the burning pain in his side and the dust on his hands. He thinks that he’s shaking, quivering like a sad, wretched little dog, but his brain is on standby, disconnected, blue-screening. He can barely breathe and when he does, his tongue tastes like ozone and iron and earth, filling his mangled chest with a choking sense of failure, stretching deep into the very core of his irregularly beating heart.

 

                The voice hums again, sharper, but still wavering beneath the quiet ringing and pulse in his ears; beneath begs and apologies that whisper like a chant; beneath a longing and sorrow that belongs to a disk in his chest.

 

                He’s getting tugged backwards by the collar of his under suit, his legs uncoiling and dragging on the red sand in front of him. His wound burns fire and a groan of pain escapes him, his vision snapping back to reality. He gasps, and his hands latch onto the back of his collar, forming a vice around whatever’s got him by the throat. His legs scramble to stand, but he’s too spent, too tired to do so.

 

                The thing that’s caught his collar is smooth to the touch, metallic plates crudely welded into an ironclad fist that is an unyielding clasp against his shirt. He tries to turn his head to face the thing that has decided to take him as some sort of prize, but the hazy sunlight in his surely concussed eyes is too much for him to bear and he hangs his head, his body going limp under the grasp of his attacker. The adversary stumbles as his weight shifts and he is slapped unceremoniously at the back of his head, the weight hitting his bruised head like a truck. His ears ring out again and, as he wrenches away his hands from the fist at his shirt to clutch his aching occipital, he is dropped to the ground. The thin air in his lungs escapes in a harsh, sharp huff.

 

                “I don’t know how my father was afraid of you,” the voice spits from above him, loathing and grief clear in the flat, lowly resonating sound. “Because this is fucking pathetic.”

 

                Tony laughs. It’s a harsh, gurgling sound deep in his throat and it brings tears to his eyes, though it’s not because it hurts; its because that sound is his tell that he’s nearing the end of his rope. If he hasn’t already snapped, he was coming close to it.

 

                “Don’t I know it,” he breathes, his smile all teeth, bloody and defensive, hard lines cutting into the flesh of his cheeks. He laughs again, but it doesn’t sound like a laugh. It sounds thick and hateful and grating and mournful and guilty. It doesn’t take much for it to devolve into a barely repressed sob, his breath hitching as he tries his best to keep quiet. It tastes like apologies.

 

                The person above him remains silent through his ordeal, though he can hear them shuffle quietly at his head, the sound of machinery whirring softly just on the cusp of his hearing.

 

                “I’m so sorry,” he finds himself saying, through his dust-laced lips and tongue, and through the thick haze of self-hate that pumps in time with the pulse in his neck.

 

 

                The person shifts again and sighs, the sound bordering closer on annoyance than sympathy or pity. “It wasn’t your fault.

 

                _Fuck you,_ he thinks spitefully, though he’s not sure if he’s directing it at the person at his head or at himself. He heaves a weepy breath out again. _Fuck you._

                It may have been hours that passed, it’s not like he is keeping track, before he feels the familiar numbness spread throughout his whole body, his brain switching to autopilot. He remains spread on the earth below him, unmoving, not wishing for anything more or anything less. In those few moments, he feels like a stranger in his own body. All qualities that make him who he is are gone, replaced only with an irregular heartbeat, a pain in his side, tears on his cheeks, apologies on his lips, and reactor hums in his brain. He finds that he doesn’t know if he wants to live or die and he doesn’t have the energy or the know-how to choose. He’s stuck, but he doesn’t care.

 

                He’s aware that the person has sat down by his side, their left knee pressing against the right side of his face. It doesn’t hurt. It’s solid. Grounding. He doesn’t want it there, but he can’t force himself to move it.

 

                “We can’t stay here, Stark,” the voice- she, Tony decides- says sullenly. “We- you need to go back home.”

 

                “Why?” he mumbles. “They’ll all be gone.”

 

                “You don’t know that.”

 

                “I don’t care. I don’t want to go.” His words hit him hard in the solar plexus and tears almost wash over him again. He takes in a haggard breath and lets it out with a jagged whoosh, keeping the tears at bay.

 

                “Stark,” she says, and it sounds like she’s talking to a small child. “Your life was worth an infinity stone.”

 

                She says it like it’s a fact, a simple statement that a passerby would hum at in contemplation as they passed an informational plaque on a park bench. Never had a fact had so much weight to it, so much pounding, heavy, pulsating weight to it, and, suddenly, the pressure in the right side of his head seems heavy too.

 

                “Your life was worth an infinity stone,” she says again, emphasis in her tone. “And I’ll be damned if I see you waste it away on this godforsaken planet. I’ll be damned if I see my father take that away from you.”

 

                _Don’t waste your life, Stark,_ his guardian angel reminds inside his head and he thinks, not for the first time, that Yinsen could see the future- that he could see Tony laying on the red dirt of an abandoned planet, bleeding from a stab wound in his side, crying to particles of dust on his fingers; that he could see all of that whilst staring at Tony through bespectacled eyes, his steady hands starting to shake as he promises to buy the ironclad man more time.

 

                That he could see further into Tony’s life than Tony would ever be able to; and that he promises that he’d be there to hold his hand in comfort when the time comes to face destruction in the eyes and lose.

 

                Tony feels like he’s facing destruction now. He’s frayed and boiled and flogged in his very soul and he feels very alone. Yinsen feels far away and home farther and, distantly, it brings him hope. It’s foolish, he knows, to attach to that belief, to forge his hope in a dead man’s wisdom, but in his loneliness, he feels desperation. He wants to go home. He doesn’t want to be alone. He wants to die surrounded and loved and he wants to feel the push on his shoulders with the steady hands of an afghani man, telling him that _yes, it’s okay. Let go._

 

                _You didn’t waste it._

Tony swallows and opens his eyes for what feels like the first time in years and peers at the cloudless sky above him. He turns his head slightly and looks his companion in the face, her silvery mechanisms in her skin glinting gold under the red sky. Her black eyes regard him carefully, tearfully, and exhaustedly.

 

                “I- “ Tony rasps, blinks, and tries again. “I want to go home.”

 

                The blue alien woman’s eyes soften slightly and her lips twitch in something that could’ve been a smile.

 

                “Then let’s go home.”

 

\---

               

With help from the alien lady, his arm latched firmly around her shoulders as she hauls him to a stand, he can limp onto the Guardians’ angular ship. The blue and orange paint is chipped and faded and one of the spread wingtips is snapped off. He hopes that it won’t cause an issue. The alien lady drops the hangar door and a broad ramp lowers to the ground, the machinery moaning under the strain. He takes a breath as he steps on the surface of the ramp, the shift of angle causing slight vertigo. His path doesn’t veer, and he has the alien to thank for that.

 

They stumble aboard the ship and it takes Tony a moment for his vision to adjust to the dark ship. When he is finally able to see past the fuzziness in his eyes, Tony is not too surprised by the state of things. There’s the usual wear and tear on the surface of the walls, and there are miscellaneous objects strewn across the floor. Plastic wrappers of various alien foods are strewn about the floor and a contraption that’s shaped vaguely like a bomb is jutting slightly out from beneath a holographic table. He sees a cassette tape peeking out from beneath some sort of backless tablet and he nearly laughs.

 

The alien moves them around the large table in the middle of the room, steering them towards the cockpit. Tony thinks that, if he and his new companion weren’t in an extraordinarily depressing and dangerous situation, he would want to ask and find out what that table could do, if the glass top and endless array of buttons are anything to go by. But, as it were, they were stranded on an alien planet, millions of miles from home, and, yeah, one of them was bleeding out.

 

Home now and table later, he rationalizes as the alien drops him, kind of carefully, but not really, into one of the chairs. He hisses in pain and his vision whites out momentarily. When his eyesight returns, the alien is gone from his peripheries, and he can hear the closing of the hangar door behind him.

 

He shifts slightly on his haunches, right hand pressed gingerly against his wound. As his body moves, something crackles beneath him. Brows furrowing, he shifts his thighs and finds dried leaf bits caught in the fabric of his clothing. The same sound crinkles at his feet and he realizes that the floor around the chair is strewn with little dried leaves. He has no idea what to think of his discovery and opts to simply ignore it, turning his attention towards the gaping hole in his side and not the dried foliage clinging to his pants.

 

Drawing in a small breath, he gently lifts the tattered fabric of his jacket away from the wound, the little tethers of fabric heavy with dark red blood. The wound tingles at the adjustment, but there’s no downright pain yet. Tony releases his breath at the realization only to bite his lip at the severity of the wound itself. The temporary injury sealant has peeled off the wound almost completely, all the strands an ugly shade of pink. The cut in his side is about four inches long, stretching from the bottom of his last rib to right above his left hip bone. Dust and dried blood cake the edges of the injury and slightly redder, more oxygenated blood dribbles lethargically down his side and into the hollows of his hips peeking below the hem of his pants. He can see the threats of an infection starting to grip along the edges of the injury, the flesh looking puffy and angry. A dark bruise blooms just above his last rib and into his left pectoral, dangerously close to his heart. The bruise looks like a massive fist.

 

A wave of battered exhaustion befalls him, and he lets out a weary sigh, letting his head fall back against the headrest. He lets his vision swim out again, his focus dwindling as he listens to the alien rummage through the Guardians’ belongings.

 

It’s not half a minute later when the alien enters his blurred vision again. With a slow blink and some determination, he forces himself to focus on her as she kneels in front of him, a red cloth box cradled in her arms. The scrawl on the side of the box is nothing he’s seen on earth, but he knows a first aid kit when he sees one.

 

He wrinkles his nose slightly and she puts the box down beside her, out of his sight. He hears her open a pair of latches.

 

“Leaving and entering planetary atmospheres can be rough- especially on people like you,” she offers, without sparing him a glance.

 

He can’t decide if he should be offended or not, but, in the end, he decides he can’t argue.

 

When he offers nothing in response, she looks at him from the corner of her eye, her hands stilling over her task inside the red box.

 

“Which means that we have to do all we can now, so you don’t pass out and die upon reentry, or, god forbid, liftoff.”

 

Tony’s lips lift in a smirk. “I don’t think we have that kind of time. I can’t heal from this- “he gestures lethargically to his injury “-in a few hours.”

 

“No, you can’t,” she agrees after a long, contemplative pause, looking back to her work on the floor of the ship. Tony expects her to say something more, but nothing comes.

 

Before he can get too far into thinking up his own solution, the alien straightens on her knees and reaches for his left arm with her right hand, her other fist, this one shrouded in metal, gently gripping a loaded syringe.

 

He nearly bolts out of his seat, but the hissing wound in his side and the unforgiving hand clasped around his wrist keeps him tethered to the chair. He resorts to lifting his right leg and pushing at her shoulder with his toes, steering the needle as far away from the trunk of his body as he can.

 

“Nuh-uh,” he says warningly, but his voice gives way with a quiver of fear. “Whatever kind of opiate you have in there to send me on cloud nine is not worth me getting some sort of alien AIDS.”

 

The alien narrows her eyes and goes to respond, but Tony cuts her short, straightening his leg even farther when he feels her shoulder rotate towards him. “Or-“ he sing-songs. “-it’s not worth me getting addicted to that good shit and having me bother you for the last half decade of my life, begging you to shoot me up until I OD on the bathroom floor.”

 

Her lips curl into an unsavory snarl. “If I had any less control, I’d grab the nearest weapon of the rat’s making and pistol whip you so hard, it’ll smear your brains over these already disgusting walls,” she snaps, her monotone drawl causing him to shiver.

 

“You’d be doing me a favor,” he quips instead of showing his fear, still unsuccessfully trying to wrench his left hand away from her ironclad grasp.

 

She stares at him darkly and he returns her gaze, though he’s sure fear is evident in his eyes. He swallows hard and his leg begins to shake from strain and uneasiness. By the way her shoulder tenses under his foot, he can tell that she can feel the fear that vibrates throughout his entire body.

 

“Please don’t,” he says, and he hates how weak it sounds.

 

The alien doesn’t blink, doesn’t move, but her gaze does soften.

 

“It’s a narcotic,” she says, and he feels her right hand loosen a little. “Non-addictive. This is a new needle- no chance for any kind of secondary exposure. I’ve used this drug on myself with no problems. I promise.”

 

Tony’s mouth twists. “On yourself, huh? You’re half machine.” He doesn’t mean for it to come out as sharp and as harsh as it does, but the uneasiness is making him a tad testy.

 

She squints at him slightly and brings her eyes to stare, very pointedly, at the arc reactor sitting between his pectorals. “You’re one to speak.”

 

Tony grimaces and looks away, his right hand coming to rest upon the reactor, the washed blue light turning his fingers bright red as he blocks it from view.

 

He is in pain. He does want relief. He does want to trust this being, but after all the hell that trust had brought him in the past, he’s scared.

 

He can feel the sonic taser deep inside his belly, the high-pitched rings echoing like a devil’s promise inside his ears. Obie’s face above him is cut into the very shadows of space, the reactor splitting into the haze to illuminate his hellish gaze, with his mouth full of more than two decades worth of deceit and false, manipulative comforts, shaped into the teeth of a scavenging hyena.

 

The shadows shift slightly, hardening between his eyes and around the top of his head. He’s breathing hard, the air in front of his gaping, bloody mouth forming a cloud. His face contorts further, his mouth changing teeth to that of an alligator, the clamping of his jaws sounding like the snapping shut of an Iron Man helmet. His mouth is chanting, one word, over and over, loud against the pained moans of an assassin and the howling of the Siberian wind: _Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes._

_I can do this all day._

“I don’t trust well,” Tony gasps, the haunting visions of betrayals of the past simmering into background sound. The alien’s gaze is steady and her grip on his left wrist is laxed. He could tear it out of her fingers, but he doesn’t. He notices that his right foot has dropped back to the floor at some point, his thigh aching from the strain and tremors running through his body. Despite this, and despite his obvious lack of defense, the alien’s armed, metal fist hasn’t moved; the syringe is still held gently between her fingers, high and away from his body.

 

“Me neither,” she says, a flicker of sympathy clouding her gaze for the first time. “And it pains me to think that I may be putting my faith into a suicidal human who’ll kill himself before he can defeat my father.”

 

Tony offers her a small, pained scoff. “You’re putting a lot of faith into a man who may not be able to defeat him in the first place. Don’t put all of your bets on that card.”

 

“The wizard did.”

 

“Yeah and look what happened to him.”

 

“But he did,” the alien insists. “And I refuse to believe that he made a mistake, trading that stone for your life.”

 

“Based on what? He made a shit call and it cost us everything. Thanos won because Strange would’ve rather died and let your father win than live with a death on his conscious.”

 

This time, the alien actually does laugh, and it throws Tony through a loop.

 

“I don’t believe for a single goddamn second that you really think that.”

 

“I do,” Tony growls, trying to keep the truth of the matter from slamming into him.

 

“You don’t,” the alien smiles, her lips sharp and jagged. “You hate that the wizard made that call. You hate it because you must’ve figured out by now that he made that call because he saw _you_ at the heart of whatever winning reality he saw. You hate it because he trusts you to be worth that sacrifice and that haunts you.”

 

The words knock the wind out of him and he tenses in his chair. “I didn’t fucking ask to become Atlas! I’m not worth an infinity stone. I’m not worth even the fucking _dirt_ on his godforsaken planet. Strange made a mistake and everyone paid the price. I _can’t_ do it. I _can’t_ kill your father-“ he pauses and the stillness in the air is enough to bring the tears back to his eyes. “-I- I’m so _tired._ I’m tired of destroying everything I touch. I’m tired of feeling guilty. I’m…I’m _done.”_

The last word is barely a whisper, a lump forming at the back of his throat. He looks away and juts out his right arm towards her, the veins on the underside of his wrist skywards.

 

She doesn’t move for a few long moments and Tony notices that her left arm is shaking slightly. He offers her no tell and shuts his eyes instead, curling his right hand into a loose fist.

 

“Do your fuckin’ damage,” he says, trying his best to keep his voice level.

 

He hears her sigh and his left arm is released from its chamber, only for his right arm to be encased with the same touch, though it’s much gentler this time; only a forefinger and a thumb pressing against the sides of his wrist.

 

“You’ll feel better,” she says quietly, and he almost believes her.

 

He feels the telltale pinch at the crook of his elbow and it’s all his power not to tense or flinch at the feeling. The needle is in and out in a few split moments and he almost feels like he’s signed some sort of contract. He doesn’t know what it means- he can’t read the alien language- but it’s binding. Debt? Maybe that’s it. But maybe it’s more than that too.

 

He keeps his eyes closed as he feels a light, but painful pressure on his wound and, this time, he can’t resist the tensing of his muscles. He feels her hands probe the area with the touch of a butterfly’s wings for a few moments before she leaves the area again. It’s not a few seconds later before he feels the touch return, but this time, it’s much more painful.

 

“Nggh,” he groans, his toes curling inside his shoes, heavy and pulsating pain rolling through his torso. His back arches slightly off the chair before her metal hand settles on the right side of his ribcage, her fingertips right below his reactor, pushing the air from his lungs and forcing his body back down.

 

He wrenches open his left eye and watches as she presses thick gauze onto the wound, the cloth already turning a light pink. He quickly decides to shut his eye again.

 

“When will this narcotic kick in?” he moans miserably as another roll of pain cuts through his abdomen. He feels cotton start to cloud the inside of his head and the noise -though minimal- is starting to sound very far away. “M’gonna pass out.”

 

He thinks he hears her apologize and promise something, but his entire focus is currently on not blacking out, so he doesn’t catch the specifics.

 

Time passes like dripping syrup and he is out of it for a long period of time. He never passes out, which he can’t tell if he’s thankful for that or not, but he certainly fazes in and out of lucidity for a while.

 

His consciousness crests upwards for a few moments and he thinks that the pressure and prodding and pain has ceased, but he doesn’t get a solid answer before he’s dipping downwards again.

 

He must not have been out as long as he thought he was because the next time he cracks open his eyes, he can see the alien still kneeling in front of him, her attention on the red box on the floor. Her right arm is stretched awkwardly across her body to reach Tony’s left arm, allowing her as much maneuverability as possible while she keeps a close feel on the underside of his wrist. He glances down at his side and sees that the under suit around the wound has been cut and stripped away, leaving a hole that stretches from his belly button to nearly his spine, and the top of his hip and the second to last left rib. It leaves ample room for the mass of gauze and tape that presses against the wound. Some of the edges are already dark with blood. He sighs, and he presses the back of his head on the headrest behind him.

 

“Thank you,” he whispers.

 

The alien nods once. “Stitches are too risky right now.”

 

“That’s okay.” Tony shuts his eyes again, bringing in an experimental breath through his nose. His lungs expand and there is little to no pain, even from the weight of the reactor he has grown used to. He takes in another breath, and another, relishing in the momentary relief that the narcotic has supplied. The handful of moments pass as he becomes used to the clarity and painlessness, and he decides to shift upwards in his seat slightly.

 

Tony feels the alien let go of his wrist, the warmth of her fingers lingering. He opens his eyes in time to see the alien leave his side, red box under her metal arm. He carefully retracts both arms and cradles them to his chest, his hands gripping his biceps in a desperate gesture of self-comfort. Despite the drug in his system, his wound twinges slightly at the pressure in his chest and he dutifully ignores it.

 

When the alien returns into his field of vision, she pays him no heed and passes him, settling herself down at one of the two pilot consoles at the front of the ship. She sits for a few seconds, hands flittering over the buttons and levers before flicking a few switches and jostling the console. Engines at the rear of the ship splutter and roar to life, little lights on the floor illuminating the walkways in response. A HUD flickers on at the dashboard, a static of bright colors before it settles into what looks like a topographical map.

 

Intrigued and feeling slightly aloof, Tony stands on shaky legs, breathing through the tingling pain for a few seconds, and arduously makes his way over to the vacant pilot seat at the right, arms still wrapped around his body as he falls into the chair. The alien, again, pays him no heed as she continues figuring out the buttons. She presses one button and the vessel is suddenly filled with sound. He winces at the jarring sensory input and the woman curses out a string of alien words. Before the sound is cut by another button slam, Tony can make out the familiar drumline of _Tusk._

He turns to the alien with a raised eyebrow and she simply shakes her head, tapping on something on the HUD.

 

“The Footloose conversation should’ve been the first tell,” he comments weakly.

 

The alien shakes her head again. “Out of all the partners she could’ve chosen, my sister really went for the most moronic member of the bunch. The talking tree would’ve fared her better.”

 

Tony, though having not a clue what that last sentence could’ve meant, chuckles. “Well, gotta say Quill’s got good taste, in music anyway. Fleetwood Mac is certainly a band I can resonate with.”

 

Bruce’s Beetles reference towards the Avengers breakup has little to nothing against a band that had broken up and reformed more times than Tony had suits.

 

Tony frowns. He hopes Bruce is okay.

 

The alien hums, pauses, and turns towards Tony with a curious glint in her eye, snapping the man out of his surely-to-derail-thoughts. “Quill named this ship.”

 

Tony breathes out, thankful for the distraction. “Of course he did.”

 

The alien turns towards Tony even further. “I think it’s the name of someone? It must be an earth thing because it makes no sense to me.”

 

Tony turns his head, so it’s angled more towards her. He regards her for a few moments and he can feel the lines of the contract start to focus. He can see her hesitantly, slowly, start to extend a trusting, helping hand towards him, hoping that maybe he’ll take the food from her palm. He might not quite be there yet, but, then again, she probably isn’t either, and he leans away from her slightly. But before her eyes can lose that mysterious glint in them, he decides to humor her.

 

“What’s the name of it?”

 

“The Benatar.”

 

Tony snorts and then laughs. “Yeah, that’s an earth thing.”

 

She nods and turns back to the console, flicking a few more switches for preliminary flight checks. “What is it?” she asks.

 

“More like ‘who is it,’” Tony responds, settling deeper into the chair with a wince and a sigh. “Pat Benatar. She’s a singer. Still doing work today, I believe.”

 

 _If she hasn’t turned to dust like half of everyone else,_ the insidious part of his brain hisses.

 

He offers it a self-directed grimace, but otherwise ignores it.

 

The alien doesn’t say anything, but she does nod minutely. A moment later, the whole ship shudders and the wing tips on the edge of the wing itself spread. The noise at the rear of the ship intensifies and the nose of the ship rocks forward slightly. Tony’s arms unwrap themselves and his hands latch onto the armrests of the chair, an involuntary gasp escaping his lips.

 

“You know,” he says as he gathers enough of his fine motor functions to buckle the seat straps against his chest and lap. “It didn’t quite dawn on me until this very second that we have to shoot our asses back up into space.”

 

He casts her a desperate glance. “I’m not a big fan of that place.”

 

“Tough.” She grabs the steering mechanism with one hand and the thrust lever in the other, pulling the first one down and pushing the latter one up.

 

There’s a groaning sound at the back of the ship, the nose of the vessel starting to ease its way upwards. The glass is starting to fill with the view of the red-tinted sky and Tony turns away, focusing on the blinking buttons in front of him.

 

The alien grits her teeth and pushes the lever farther forwards. The ship groans again, but there is otherwise no response.

 

“We’re caught,” she says, glancing over her shoulder on her left side, leaning so she can peer out the window. “There are rocks catching on the rear stabilizers and thrusters.”

 

She pulls the lever back slightly and the nose of the ship dips downwards again. “They’ll tear the hull of the ship.”

Tony stares at the buttons in front of him, watching them blink frantically. One button in particular catches his eye: it’s a large blue one. It’s glowing so bright it’s almost white and it’s blinking slowly. Patiently.

 

Like a heartbeat.

 

“I’m on it,” Tony says.

 

He hastily unbuckles from his chair and stands on quivering legs. He watches the alien look at him quizzically as he touches the arc reactor in the middle of his chest with two quick taps of his middle finger.

 

The nano-particles of the armor begin to spread over his body, layering over the tattered remains of his under suit. He winces as the particles settle over his wound, but that’s as far as it gets before he feels the reactor whirr and the spread of the nanotechnology halts. The armor covers only the trunk of his body, along with his lower back, ass, and thighs; the armor very nearly graces the tops of his shoulders.

 

He ignores the alien’s questioning comments as he directs the nano-particles to his forearms and palms, encasing only his hands, arms, and chest in the sturdy Iron Man armor.

 

“Door?” he asks the alien, flexing his fingers, hearing his palm thrusters whine.

 

She presses a button on his half of the console and he hears a hatch open behind him. He turns, seeing an open rectangle on the floor, past the holographic table near the back of the ship, with a staircase leading down. He takes wobbly steps up and into the large room, haphazardly spreading sealant from the top of his right wrist onto the gauze stuck to his side, ensuring that the gauze won’t come undone.

 

He goes down the staircase as quickly and as carefully as he can, setting foot, once again, on the deserted, dusty planet. He instinctually buries his nose and mouth into the back of his left hand, the metal against his face uncomfortable as he tries to breathe in as little dust as possible.

 

The underside of the ship is sweltering, no less than four thrusters working in tandem to release the ship from the planet’s rocky hold. His eyes begin to water, and his hairline begins to sweat.

 

 It only takes him about fifteen seconds before he finds the multitude of boulders that keep the ship from rising skyward. Incredibly careful of keeping the ship’s hull intact, he aims his palms towards the boulders latching against the sides of the rear of the ship.

 

The repulsors whine and a hard line of blue light flashes from his palms, hitting one boulder dead center. The surface of the rock cracks and crumbles and he’s quick to cut the energy when the boulder crumbles into near dust. He makes quick work of the second one, the third, and checks for any more perpetrators before he hobbles back onto the ship, legs aching as he ascends the staircase. With a quiet shudder, the staircase folds itself back upwards, connecting, locking, and sealing behind Tony.

 

He makes his way as quickly as he can back to the front of the ship, retracting his suit back into his reactor in the process. The alien looks at him, her dark eyes searching over him for a moment, before she nods, her hands returning to the pair of controls.

 

She rotates the steering mechanism experimentally, giving a pleased hum as the flaps on the inside edge of the wings flare upwards. She puts them down again and, with a few quick swipes on the HUD, she has visuals of the top of the ship, the imperceptible camera facing backwards. She clicks and turns a nearby dial and deacceleration flaps engage, paired with little thrusters in the center of each flap. She turns the dial back and they fold inwards, back into the body of the ship.

 

Tony sits back down onto his chair, buckling quickly with shaking hands. He stills for a moment, heaves a nervous sigh, and turns towards the alien.

 

“Homeward bound,” he says, and she nods.

 

She engages the thrusters and a plume of dirt explodes beneath the ship, curling up outside the large window. The ship groans, shudders, and leaves the ground, slowly ascending.

 

Tony watches nervously as the landscape starts to vanish beneath the bottom of the window, the large metallic remains of the dead world stretching into the sky like spikes. He swallows, his palms sweating against his hard grip on the armrests.

 

“Earth,” comes the alien’s steady voice.

 

Tony turns his attention to the HUD as it chirps in response, a flight pattern loading on its screen. Lines that look like trajectory bloom on the screen and rings form around two separate dots on the interface, one red and one blue. Numbers appear beside them.

 

Gravitational pulls.

 

The computer gives another pair of chirps and the lights on the floor, walls, and ceiling shut off. The only light on the ship now is given off by a handful of buttons, the HUD, the arc reactor, and Titan’s muggy sunlight.

 

Tony’s anxiety skyrockets, but he keeps it together, even as the ship starts to angle skywards again, the nose of the craft nearing a 70-degree tilt from the ground. He wrenches his eyes shut, dips his head, and Benatar’s _Anxiety_ blooms in his head.

 

He feels the ship edge forwards slowly before it begins to speed up at a rather alarming pace. The craft shoots skywards, the entire thing shuddering through the ragged atmosphere and spotty gravity.

 

He finds himself mouthing along to the song inside his head, trying his best to distance himself from the situation. But when he stutters on _yeah, I just need someone,_ he blanks out as his heart pounds in his chest.

 

There is so much sound surrounding him and he can almost feel the pressure of the vastness of space starting to pull them upwards.

 

Behind his eyes, he can see the gaping blackness of the wormhole.

 

                The narcotic does nothing against the vibrations that sing through his body, the arc reactor -though not completely imbedded into his body- pulling at his skin and muscles. The wound in his side is searing, the bloody crevice sure to have opened wide again.

 

                He’s just about to scream in pain -or maybe he has been the whole time- before there is one final pull and then quiet befalls the atmosphere.

 

                Eyes still screwed together tightly, he breathes in and out raggedly, his pulse strong in his injury. He can’t relax the grip he has on the armrests and his feet might as well be bolted to the floor.

 

                “Stark,” he hears the alien say and he can feel her cold gaze on him. “It’s over. We’re off Titan.”

 

                “Yeah,” he agrees with a gasp. “Into someplace much worse.”

 

                He doesn’t even want to hear the word.

 

                The rear of the ship makes a noise and the sound of the thrusters fall a little quieter. There is a faint, consistent beeping coming from what Tony thinks is the HUD and he latches onto that.

 

                “Stark,” the alien says again, interrupting his reprieve.

 

                “Hold on,” he barely manages through gritted teeth.

 

                He begins to count his breathing, struggling to keep it in time with the beeping of the console. The alien remains quiet, though Tony can hear her adjusting the controls. He keeps counting. He keeps breathing.

 

                Slowly, he begins to relax. His breathing still hitches slightly, but he forces his shoulders to relax and it feels good to release the tension that was coiled inside them. He’s hesitant to open his hands, but he forces himself to do it anyways and he feels his knuckles creak under the stress of release. His hands do instantly find his biceps again in a position of comfort, but his grip isn’t as tight anymore. Before he knows it, his breathing is on the better side of okay and his heartbeat has slowed to a much less painful pound. His wound still smarts slightly, but he welcomes that slow, beating pain.

 

                “Okay,” he confirms shakily after about two minutes, nodding his head. His eyes are still shut, but loosely so. He can see lights from beneath his eyelids. “Disaster averted.”

 

                “Your eyes are still closed.”

 

                “I’d rather not panic again, thank you.”

 

                “…humans are weird.”

 

                Tony chuckles. “A phobia of sp-“ he swallows and cuts himself off, instead gesturing in front of him with a hand he can’t see. “ -it’s not a universal thing, though I don’t know how it’s not. It’s terrifying.”

 

                The alien woman hums and he can hear her relax into her seat. “Maybe. But it is home.”

 

                Tony can’t say anything to that, so he doesn’t.

 

                “What’s your name?” he says instead, looking at his lap and opening his eyes a fraction. There’s not much to see there; all he can see are his shaking hands, a handful of buttons on the console and his wound which, yeah, the gauze is getting pinker.

 

                He can hear her shift again and he thinks she may have tensed. There’s a soft mechanical whirr as she lets out a sigh.

 

                “I’m sorry,” he apologizes, though he’s not sure why.

 

                “Nebula,” she says, and Tony is confused for a moment before she elaborates.

 

                “My name is Nebula.”

 

                “Fitting,” he responds, and he feels a corner of his mouth quirk upwards. He opens his eyes a little wider and slowly swivels his gaze towards her. He can see the dark expanse of the black vacuum just past her, through the window on her left, but he keeps his focus on her.

 

                She is fiddling with her metallic wrist, her blue fingers probing at the palm of metal in her lap.

 

                Tony swallows and sees a different metal palm, speckled in soot, snow, and blood. The blood drips from its digits, warm and dark, and it echoes the gasps of a dying mother.

 

                It takes a moment for him to notice that the alien -Nebula- is looking at him expectantly, like she had just asked a question.

 

                “Sorry, what?” Tony says. He doesn’t notice that he’s rubbing his arc reactor.

 

                “I said what’s yours?”

 

                It takes another moment for him to remember the conversation, and when he does pick up on the dropped thread, he gives her a timid, but warm smile.

 

                “Tony.”

 

                She regards him carefully for a few moments before she inclines her head towards him in a silent gesture of respect.

 

                He dips his head in return and she looks away, eyes on the window in front of her. Her metal arm twitches in her lap and her mouth curls momentarily.

 

                Tactless as always, Tony comments on it.

 

                “Arm bothering you?”

 

                She visibly tenses and tries to hide her arm at the side of her body. She doesn’t respond.

 

                Tony tries again. “Wires are kinda my thing. Not in a kink way, but in a handsy way. No, you know what, let’s ignore those last two sentences. I’m a mechanic, okay? So, whatever’s going on that’s buggin’ you, I can do my best to help. Unless it’s not really metal and it’s some sort of element that I’ve never seen or heard of before, then we may have an issue. Eh, what the hell I’ve made my own element before so-“

 

                “Do you ever stop speaking?” she snaps, though there’s little heat behind the words, all things considered.

 

                “No, not usually no. I like attention.”

 

                “And if I give it to you, will you shut up?”

 

                “Okay, maybe, but first you have to buy me dinner and maybe come up with a safe word, if that’s how you plan on ending the night. Day. Whatever.”

 

                It’s obvious that Nebula cannot follow much of what he’s saying, if her blazing, yet dark stare is anything to go by. Her stare turns contemplative after a moment, though. “You remind me of Quill.”

 

                Tony’s nose crinkles “Ew. Take it back.”

 

                She offers him a small scoff and a quirked lip. That look reminds Tony of Natasha and his heart sinks.

 

                God, it’s been so long. Too long. And now he’s regretting not having called Steve sooner.

 

                Steve.

 

                “It keeps shorting out,” Nebula’s saying, bringing her metal arm back into Tony’s vision. “Something in my palm and wrist.”

 

                “Hm. Can’t say I’ve worked on a mechanical organism before, but I guess there’s a first for everything,” Tony hums, his hands reaching for his seat buckle, pausing for a moment.

 

                Nebula doesn’t stop his movements, so he deems it okay to unlock himself. He half expects to start floating upwards, as a lack of gravity would tend to induce, but his feet stay firmly planted on the ground. Any limp or stumble or misstep is a fault of his own.

 

                His wound wrenches again. He grumbles in annoyance as he hobbles the three feet to Nebula’s left side, conscious of the way she’s staring at him like he could pounce.

 

                _Please,_ he thinks. _As if I had the energy to do that. I can barely fucking walk._

He makes it over easily enough, but before he can touch her arm to examine it, she wrenches it away, jumping like she had been shocked on a live wire, which may not be that farfetched, if her self-diagnosed prognosis was anything to go by.

 

                “Hm,” he can’t help but say, looking at her with a wry, but deeply sympathetic smile. “I wonder what this is reminiscent of?”

 

                She glares at him, but it’s more trepidation and fear than much else.

 

                He waits a handful of moments, waiting for her to unfurl herself on her own. When she doesn’t, he sighs and leans against the console, back facing away from the blackened windows of stars and dusty planets. He double taps his reactor again and her attention turns rapt as the metal flickers and spreads over as much of his body as it can. He ushers the particles to his hands, gauntlets of red, gold, and blue covering his palms. A moment passes, and the shape of a flathead grows from the junction between his thumb and forefinger. Tool still attached, he wraps the aforementioned digits around the object, holding it towards her as nonthreateningly as he can.

 

                “I won’t do it if you don’t want me to. If you don’t trust me enough,” he says, and Nebula looks away, swallowing nervously. “But it’s all I have to offer.”

 

                _It’s the only way I can say ‘thank you,’_ goes unsaid, but not misunderstood.

 

                A few seconds pass and there’s no words shared between them, only an air of uneasy, frightened silence, and words of a contract floating between them.

 

                If he wasn’t looking, he would’ve missed the signal of her consent as she opened her palm skyward, fingers groaning minutely at the movement.

 

                He moves his unoccupied hand to encircle her wrist in his own ironclad grasp and asks her where it is bothering her. She points out a space just below the palm, at the junction between the hand and her wrist, right where the vein would be. Tony rolls his shoulders and gets to work.

 

                The first few prods at her metal plating are tedious. She keeps twitching and the flathead keeps slipping. When he eventually manages to peel up a piece of metal on her palm, by the first joint on her thumb, she tenses and looks away. He mutters consoling words to her as he works the metal as smoothly and as painlessly as he can. He has no idea how her nerve endings were affected by her prosthetic, so he treads as carefully as he can.

 

                “What is that?” she inquires after about ten minutes of work. She’s not looking at her arm, which is now peeled open down to almost her elbow.

 

                Tony’s confused by the question, but his eyes don’t leave her arm as he works. “What’s what?”

 

                “The thing in your chest.”

 

                “It’s uh, it’s an arc reactor. It powers my suit. It also used to keep me alive, but I crossed that bridge a while ago.”

 

                “Hm,” is all she offers before the pair fall in silence, leaving Tony dissatisfied with the content of the conversation. He pries at a wire underneath a metallic rod that resembles an ulna, resulting in the alien relaxing minutely.

 

                “It kept shrapnel from tearing my heart apart,” he says and keeps going when she doesn’t interrupt. “It also prevented me from going into cardiac arrest. Fun times, those five years.”

 

                “Did it hurt?” she asks softly, her tone jarring Tony ever so slightly. She sounds a little afraid, a little sympathetic, and more than a little understanding. Ever protective of the reactor in his chest, Tony hesitates for a few moments, but once he realizes that she’s reaching out, hands grasping for something to hold, he decides to extend a branch to her.

 

                “Yeah,” he confesses. “Yeah it did. It still does, sometimes. The one I have now is detachable- I don’t need it to survive, but sometimes…sometimes it just starts to feel…heavy. It feels like I can never fill my lungs enough. Some of it’s psychological too. I’ll wake up some nights and think that someone has taken it and that I’m dying because I can’t see the blue light. Other times I’ll think I have it and get nervous at the idea of someone taking it away from me again.”

 

                He heaves a sigh. It’s not very often he unloads like this, especially to a stranger.

 

                He’s not expecting a response from the cold woman so when she turns to him, her dark eyes wide with understanding, he’s a little startled, but also, he feels a little less alone.

 

                “My father always made me and my sister spar,” she says, and he can hear a bit of bitterness in the way she mentions both of her family members. “Every time I lost, he would replace a piece of me with machinery, hoping that I would someday become her equal.”

 

                Her face becomes dark and the look makes Tony nervous.

 

                “She was victorious every single time.”

 

                Tony is about to offer his condolences, but his mouth snaps shut when she continues to speak.

 

                “I should’ve known that it wouldn’t matter. It wouldn’t matter if I was better or if she was better or if we were equal or if I never existed. He would’ve found some other poor fool to torture.”

 

                She then looks up at Tony and he’s shocked to see her eyes glossed with tears.

 

                “I never should have left her,” she sniffs, angry at her father, angry at the world, angry at herself; Tony can’t discern the difference between those hates because he knows all three deeply and intimately. “If not, then maybe I’d be dead at the bottom of the cliff on Vormir, not her.”

 

                Tony can’t offer her anything. He can’t offer anything because he knows the weight that this kind of mourning brings, and it takes much more than a handful of condolences and apologies to bring someone out of that kind of pit.

 

                So much more. Tony knows this well.

 

                “I’m sorry about your sister,” is what he settles on and it does everything and nothing at all. Nebula looks at him with all the wretched, festering sadness in the world, impacted with the snap of the fingers of a gold-plated gauntlet.

 

                “I’m sorry about your son,” she responds, and she looks away after a moment, her shoulders shaking with quiet sobs. Tony’s infinitely appreciative of the gesture because it’s not two seconds later that his shoulders are shuddering again, and his head is hanging low, tears pooling in the corners of his eyes and the memories of dust and _I don’t want to go’s_ caking underneath his fingernails.

 

                They move through the infinite expanse of space, moving farther and farther away from the looming body of Titan. The computer beeps softly, guiding them back home in gentle, somber arms.

 

\---

 

                Wakanda _was_ beautiful. Was _once_ beautiful.

 

                Well, he supposes it still is- past all the silence and the gore and the dust and the trenches dug into the dry, loose soil. The sky is still that bright, cloudless blue. The trees are still bright with greenery and the jungles are still rich and heavy with humidity. The city is still bright and reflective and advanced, the crowded buildings reaching up towards the sun. But what was once welcoming and what was once stunning, forged in beauty and future and thoughts of _god, Tony would love this place_ is now a place that might as well be something straight out of _The Mist._

 

                The blue sky is about to give way to a night spent alone beneath a universe that’s half as full as it once was. The trees are still in the vacant, hot air, many of their trunks split and bent and splintered beyond any hope, gnarled wood of centuries past snapped beneath razors and alien spires. The jungles are quiet, foggy places where time seems to have stood still. He half expects a raven to swoop by the tops of the trees, mournfully sighing “nevermore,” signaling the jungle’s final, motherly breath. The city is quieter still, as if the whole thing is submerged in a deprivation tank, muffled screams with lungs filled with misery and sand.

 

                _Dust and blood,_ T’Challa had promised and the thought sends Rhodey farther down the spiral. _Dust and blood._

 

                 He’s sitting in a room of people, but nobody’s saying a word and, not for the first time today, Rhodey wishes Tony were there to break the quiet, though he’s quite positive that his friend would be frighteningly silent as well. He’s sitting in a wide room, the wall at his back transparent with floor-to-ceiling windows. The floor beneath the rectangular platform he’s sat on is glass as well, though supported by iridescent, blue rebar. Spires of twinkling gold stretch like stalagmites out from the glass flooring, statues of past kings guarding at each base. Little stools line the edge of the small, carpeted platform, but not one is occupied. A throne at the head of the platform is vacant and it sends another chilly reminder down Rhodey’s spine.

 

                The remaining warriors of the fight are strewn about on the platform, some even laying down on the glass. All are in various states of stupor, mourning, and anguish.

 

Rhodey is sitting next to Natasha, their shoulders pressed together tightly, as if either of them might vanish into dust as well. Her breathing is labored, and she has her free arm, right, curled around her left ribs, but she doesn’t say anything and Rhodey understands. 

 

                Steve is laying on the ground a few feet away, on his back, one arm thrown over his eyes. His body is quaking. Rhodey’s pretty sure he’s crying. He wants to go comfort him, but there’s nothing for him to say. Sergeant Barnes is gone. Steve has no one left.

 

                Swallowing the lump in his throat, he looks over at Bruce, who’s wandering the room, giving attention, medical or otherwise, to the remaining natives. Some are warriors, but most are civilians.

 

Many of them had come into the palace’s throne room seeking their king to help ease them of their pain. Once they had set their eyes on the empty throne with no Black Panther to be seen, each one of them, without fail, burst into tears. Some of them were quiet, respectful, yet destroyed, but a handful were openly mournful. Rhodey had to turn away when the queen had entered the room not soon after the remaining Avengers had, begging for help to find her son and daughter. When the general of the Dora Milaje told her that her son was one of the casualties, she very nearly screamed, collapsing against the kingless throne. The entire hall was dead silent as the queen cried in Xhosa, the native language ringing out like the tolling of a funeral bell. Then the queen said something to the general who responded with a slow shake of her head.

 

                “Find her,” the queen had demanded, and the general slammed the end of her spear on the floor, moving swiftly from the room, a piddling trail of red-clad warriors following her path. The doors slammed shut and the room was quiet again.

 

                Now, Rhodey spies the queen sitting on the steps leading to the grand double-doors to the world outside the throne room, hands clasped together as she waits for the general to return. He notices Bruce timidly walk up to her for what must be the fourth time, asking if she needs anything. She simply shakes her head and Bruce haltingly moves on, hands wrung together and head low.

 

                There’s movement to Rhodey’s left as Thor stands up, his axe forgotten at his place. Footsteps heavy, he ambles towards Bruce, respectfully stepping around Steve’s prone form instead of over it. Thor spares Steve a pained glance before he steps beside Bruce, leaning low to speak with the smaller man. Bruce shakes his head, his whisper echoing in the room, but it’s so frantic, it’s unintelligible. Thor places a hand on Bruce’s shoulder and the man calms slightly, that wild look in his eyes softening. Thor says something else, waits for a moment, then, when Bruce doesn’t respond, he puts a gentle arm around the scientist’s shoulders and guides him back to the platform, his long strides slowing to accommodate Bruce’s suddenly lethargic movements. The pair settle down side by side, Bruce’s head leaning on Thor’s bare shoulder. His eyes fuzz out as he looks into blank space and Thor stays lucid, the hand on Bruce’s arm rubbing comforting circles.

 

                Thor notices Rhodey’s gaze and the god offers the colonel a tight-lipped, small and sad smile. Rhodey tries to smile back, but he’s sure it ends up looking more like a grimace. Rhodey can tell Thor appreciates the gesture nonetheless.

 

                “I hope Clint’s okay.”

 

                Rhodey turns to Natasha pressed against his right side, seeing barely concealed sadness and despair in her eyes. “I never really got to apologize to him about Berlin,” she says, pauses, and looks at Rhodey, seemingly at odds with whatever thoughts were making residence inside her head. “Tony too.”

 

                Rhodey’s next breath hitches and her eyes go sympathetic. “I’m sorry,” she backtracks quickly, offering him an empty smile. “I’m sure he’s okay too.”

 

                Rhodey smiles wetly, his heart wrenching with the uncertain truth she’s offered to him. “He’d better be. I’m tired of having to save his stupid ass.”

 

                Natasha scoffs lightly, but then, her body suddenly tenses as one of the doors at the end of the hall shudder and open. All heads turn and the queen jumps to her feet. Rhodey is startled when Rogers scrambles to his feet as well. Rhodey thinks that maybe Steve is still so wired, so pressed under what had happened not a few hours ago, that he’s still on the defense, still in “weapons drawn, eyes up” mode.

 

                The door opens a little further and an animal walks in, ushering a deflated and hopeless sigh across the whole room. The queen stands, staring at the bipedal creature for a few moments before sitting back down again, covering her eyes with a hand.

 

                The animal steps in, ears back with tail dragging. Thor seems to perk at the presence of this creature, but makes no moves to go towards it, Bruce still zoned out on his shoulder. The animal is followed shortly by a much larger, definitely human figure. He’s clad in blue, armored sheets of fabric, skin of a furry, white animal draped over his shoulders. The man’s eyes roam the room, stopping for many long seconds when he spies the throne before he sighs, his massive shoulders drooping. He notices the queen a few feet away and sits down by her. He doesn’t touch her, but he does say a few words to her.

 

                The words must’ve struck the queen because she’s on her feet again, nearly slipping on the stairs as she clambers up them, hauling the door open even further as a group of people step into the room. At the head of the small group of Dora Milaje, the general walks, as does a small teenager, dressed in orange.

 

                The queen nearly tackles the teenager, bringing the child into a gripping hug, Xhosa and English mixing together into a language that screams _my daughter is safe, thank god my daughter is safe!_

                The rest of the Dora Milaje spill into the room, closing the ornate door at the end with a low, echoing slam.

 

                Rhodey notices that Steve is still rigid a few seconds after the door’s been shut, his legs trembling beneath his body. Even with Steve’s back to him, Rhodey notices the hard line of his spine, giving away his desperate and longing stance. Rhodey blinks his eyes and looks down, surprised to see that tears have been pooling in them.

 

                “Steve,” Natasha says gently, causing the captain to tense even more. “He’s…he’s not coming back.”

 

                Steve startles both Natasha and Rhodey by whirling around to face them, his eyes hard as he stares at Natasha. The sheer fury and pain in his eyes are enough to make Natasha flinch and that is truly something that says more than words could ever hope to do.

 

                “How do you know that?” he seethes. “How do you know he won’t?”

 

                Natasha must sense the grief that’s pooling inside Steve and she doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t break his gaze either, continuing to stare steadily, sadly, into Steve’s icy gaze.

 

                The commotion has snapped Bruce out of his stupor and he’s now staring at Steve, his body coiled as if Steve were about to lash at him. The animal, raccoon, Rhodey has decided, is standing at Thor’s other side, ears pinned, but gaze confused. Thor stays steady, eyes on Rogers, but not moving.

 

                The room holds its breath.

 

                “We don’t know where he is,” Steve insists. “He could be anywhere.”

 

                Natasha narrows her eyes at him. Rhodey feels queasy at the thought that this may have been Steve’s final straw- that watching his friend perish in front of his eyes for the second time was too much for him to handle. Rhodey’s about to say something, -he doesn’t know, maybe it’s an apology or a comfort- but he can tell that the words are going to fall of deaf ears, so he keeps quiet. Natasha seems to come to the same conclusion.

 

                Steve is very obviously getting choked up now, his face and neck flushed red, with teary and puffy eyes. His fists are trembling. He’s being held together by threads.

 

                “I promised him-“ Steve whispers, stops, swallows the lump in his throat, and screws his eyes shut. “-I promised that we’d lose this together.”

 

                Rhodey’s thought process grinds to a halt. He feels his heart drop into his stomach and an unintentional, high-pitched choke of agony escapes him. Natasha lets out her own sound of shock as well, manifested as a short, sharp intake of breath. She presses closer to Rhodey, a gesture of comfort, before she becomes very interested in the strings of the rug beneath her.

 

                Rhodey screws his eyes shut, feeling tears squeezing out from under his eyelids. When he opens them again, his vision is so blurry, he can only see Steve in a collage of blotted colors. He tries not to let out another cry and he must bite down hard on his bottom lip to do so.

 

                “Oh…oh no, I’m-“ Steve says, sounding broken and hollow, his body moving in slow, jerking movements towards Rhodey, obviously determining whether he wants to physically console him or not. “-Rhodey, I’m sorry. I- I’ve made this about me and that’s- that’s not fair.”

 

                “It’s fine,” Rhodey says and he means it. He blinks a few times, clearing his vision slightly. The look on Steve’s face is jarring; all the anger and desperation is gone, replaced with a deep-seated panic and guilt. There are contrails of tears lining his face.

 

                “He’s fine,” Rhodey musters with as much confidence as he can. He notices the look on Rogers’ face shift nigh on uncertainty and he feels Natasha sigh beside him. He pretends to not see it.

 

                “He’ll be fine…”

 

                The sunsets over Wakanda are beautiful. Rhodey just wishes that they weren’t quite as red.

 

\---

 

 

                A week passes. Nobody goes back home. Nobody wants to go back home. The trees and the humidity and the mist are begging them to leave, but they can’t. They aren’t ready to face that.

 

                The reluctant, teenage queen and her mother are more than welcoming to them, but the ice is wearing thin. Everybody is tired, and everybody is mourning. Steve can’t imagine what the world must be like outside the secluded, little country of Wakanda. Well, he can imagine just fine, but the images hollow him out and bring him on the brink of tears.

 

                He’s sitting on a large balcony on a building that’s overlooking the battleground. Huge scores of dirt are still churned up on the field and a lot of the forestry just beyond the tree-line is smashed.

 

                It’s dusk. The city behind them is bright and hums with vibranium, but the world ahead of Steve is dark, the trees beyond capturing and holding the night like it’s searching for comfort beneath the quilt of twilight.

 

                The remaining Avengers are sat on the balcony with him, along with the bipedal raccoon, Rocket. Nobody has spoken much as of late, but everybody has a hard time letting anybody out of their sight anymore.

 

                As solemn as it is, Steve much prefers this over being alone.

 

                Steve’s laying on the concrete ground, perusing the darkening sky, watching stars twinkle into existence. He hears Thor and Rocket speaking quietly to one another, and Steve smiles a little when he hears Thor chuckle for the first time in quite some time. Bruce is sitting near Steve’s head, looking out on the battlefield, his breathing slow and deep. Natasha and Rhodey are side by side by the sliding glass doors, out of Steve’s vision. Steve had wondered why the two of them had sought each other out on instinct when everything had been said and done. He had found out, through context clues more than anything, that they had been aquatinted since early in the decade. They exchanged familiar stories with each other, elaborating if anyone else became interested.

 

                They aren’t speaking now, but when they do, Steve has to tune them out. He doesn’t like to do it- he wants to listen to them tell their stories. The problem is that they involve the one person he hasn’t seen in over two years and now that he thinks he may never be able to see him again, makes his heart hurt, like he’s been punched straight through it.

 

                The sky above him seems to agree, a long roll of thunder echoing across the darkness.

 

                Steve breathes in, filling his lungs with the scent of oncoming storms, trying to taste the rain at the back of his throat. He’s disappointed when no such scent reaches his nose and he thinks that the storm must be too far away.

 

                “You should make it rain, Thor,” he says wistfully, a passing thought more than anything else. “Or urge the storm closer. M’sure this place could use it.”

 

                “Storm?” he hears Thor say in his low tone. “There’s no storm nearby.”

 

                “Did you not hear the thunder?” Rhodey says softly, a teasing lit in his voice.

 

Something in the sky catches Steve’s eye.

               

                “It was probably just a building settling,” Bruce offers, though his voice is lost through Steve’s intense stare at the night sky.

 

                Behind the cover of darkness and the last stretches of the sun’s rays, Steve can see a faint streak of white light soaring across the black blanket far above him. At first glance, it looks like a comet, but as Steve stares harder, he sees the comet’s head suddenly blank out, and vanish into the dark sky for a few long seconds before popping back into existence, continuing its arc across the dark plane.

 

                Thunder rumbles again and the comet’s head gets larger. It takes a long time for Steve to realize that the object isn’t flying in an arc.

 

                It’s falling. Straight down.

 

                “ _Fuck,”_ Steve hisses and he hears Rhodey playfully ‘ooh’ at him before he has a chance to finish his sentence. “We have to go. _Now.”_ Steve jumps to his feet.

 

                Thankfully, Steve’s shift into Captain America is enough for everyone to scramble into standing positions, making their way out of the balcony through the sliding glass doors. Commotion erupts between them as they move through the two-story building, running down a flight of stairs to the ground floor. Steve, at the head of the small pack, pushes open the front door, leaving his hand on the frame to allow everybody else out. Bodies scramble past him and he lets the door shut once the last person, Bruce, has made it outside into the slightly chilly African evening.

 

                “Should we evacuate any of the other buildings, Cap?” Natasha asks, scanning the sky, searching for what caused Steve to react the way that he had.

 

                Steve looks around him and around his fellow Avengers. The building that the pair of queens had lent to them was a secluded little thing, big enough to house them for the time being, but too small for it to be called a home to them. There was not much else for about a mile and a half, maybe two; everything else was just empty, flat grassland. And if Steve’s predictions are right, which they usually are, whatever that object is, it was going to land either on their building or pretty damn close to it.

 

                “No,” Steve says, backing up ever so slightly as he spotted the object that seems to be falling quicker by the second. “But we need to move.”

 

                The object roars its thundering growl as it burns brighter against the sky, flecks of blue and red and gold shimmering like satin as it peels off in contrails behind it.

 

                A second object, Rhodey’s silver armor, sears through the sky, wrapping around the colonel protectively in a few seconds flat. Rhodey engages his thrusters, grabs Natasha gently by the sides and lifts off, flying at a speed that was bordering on too slow, erring on the side of Natasha’s comfort. Steve whirls around, searching for either Bruce or Rocket to help. Rocket is tucked under Thor’s arm, the grouchy mammal grumbling to himself, though his eyes are wide with anxiety. Steve reaches to help Bruce along, hiking him up on his back hastily before both Steve and Thor take off after Rhodey.

 

                Steve doesn’t realize how close they’ve cut it until he turns his head after about ten seconds of running. He slows his pace slightly, not enough to endanger him or Bruce, but enough so he can see the object that is mere seconds away from impacting the ground.

 

The object isn’t in quite as of a dramatic plummet as Steve had first guessed, but it was still coming down hard. He now could see, past the flames and smoke billowing at all angles, that the object was some sort of aircraft. Sharp wings cut through the plumes of smoke as it pinwheeled downwards and he could faintly hear alarms blaring. That is all he manages to catch before the ship catches itself somewhat in the air, straightening its flight for a split moment before its nose dips and catches on the earth beneath it.

               

                Metal crunches, cracks, and crumbles as the nose caves inwards and the belly thuds against the soil, the landing gear flayed out to the sides. The ship catches the dirt again, this time, on the far wing. The craft lurches forwards for a terrifying second, the underbelly of the ship exposed high before the wing snaps off, the resistance gone. The ship rights itself back onto the ground, continues to slide, goring up even more trenches into the dirt, smoke and fire trailing behind it. With a monstrous creak and a crunch as the second wing snaps and breaks off the body of the ship, the craft slides to a halt, the weight of the metal sagging in relief.

 

                The house, amazingly, is untouched.

 

                “I’m calling for help,” Rhodey says breathlessly through his suit, landing in a defensive position next to Rogers, who lowers Bruce off his back. Natasha draws her bites and stands at Bruce’s side, her body angled protectively towards him. Thor and Rocket are closest to the ship, about 70 feet away from the carnage. Thor’s clutching his axe in one hand and the raccoon climbs atop his shoulder, tail puffed with caution.

 

                The crashed ship groans again and more metal collapses, revealing the blue and orange paintjob the vehicle once sported. A thruster catches fire.

 

                “That’s the Benatar,” the raccoon says, standing straighter on Thor’s shoulder. Suddenly, the animal whoops, throwing a small fist in the air in a gesture of triumph. “They found us! Thor, we gotta help ‘em!”

 

                “I wondered when your crew of morons would return for their dear captain, sweet rabbit,” Thor smiles in response and for the first time in a while, he looks truly happy and relieved. The axe in Thor’s hand seems to respond to its owner’s sudden influx of emotion because the head of the weapon crackles with static. Thunder, real thunder, rumbles overhead as clouds begin to form, blotting out the night sky with their dark shapes. Rhodey has just finished contacting someone from the Wakandan security when rain starts to fall in thick sheets.

 

                The fire in and around the ship sizzles as the water douses it and it’s no time before the ship is merely scrap metal and smoke. The grass around the craft is burned black, but no longer on fire. Steve and the rest of the Avengers are soaked to the bone, hair and Kevlar heavy and sticking to their skin.

 

                Rocket hops off Thor’s shoulder as the rain slows to an easy shower, making a beeline to the ship, running on all fours. Thor follows him and so do the other four present, though much more confused and cautious.

 

                The raccoon suddenly stops dead in his run, paws skidding on the wet grass. Steve sees Thor tense slightly. “What’s amiss?”

 

                The answer comes in the halting, limping movements of a blue figure from the wreckage, her dark eyes glinting in the leftover embers. Her red clothing is in tatters and her left arm, which looks to be made of metal, is limp at her side, coils of wire blooming from it. Her face is shadowed with agony and that makes the whole group hesitate.

 

                “Nebula?” Rocket says, an odd lit of distrust in his voice. “Long time no see. Where is everyone?”

 

                The shadowed look on the alien’s face deepens and she steps closer to the animal. Thor, instinctually, steps forward to meet her pace, a looming figure over Rocket’s small body. Thor’s broad shoulders block the view of the newcomer’s face, but it’s clear by the gasp from Rocket and the tensing of Thor’s body that the look in her eyes marks yet another few taken by the ashes.

 

                Rocket’s gasp turns into a howl of anguish as he turns away, shoving past Thor and away from the wreckage. His shaking knees cause him to collapse into the damp grass, his cries muffled as he presses his snout into the dirt, his little paws tearing at the hairs on his head. Thor follows the mourning creature and simply sits at his side, elbows on his knees and head in his palms.

 

                Steve manages to tear his gaze away from the sad scene and turns back to the alien woman, Nebula. She’s not facing him, though. Her back is turned and she’s returning into the remains of the ship, her posture loose and hurting.

 

                “Who are you?” Steve half-demands, though he’s well aware that she probably won’t answer. She vanishes into the smarting mess of metal just as a pair of Wakandan war vessels arrive, stocked with must be the last few members of the Dora Milaje.

 

                The ships tilt and the warriors slide out, spears drawn and pointing threateningly at the crash ahead of them. Surprisingly, the young queen is present, though she stays in the ship, the general by her side. The pair look out at the carnage as the warriors begin to surround the space, their postures low and defensive.

 

                “What happened here, Captain?” the general says from behind Steve. The man shakes his head, eyes still searching the carnage for Nebula.

 

                “I’m not sure,” Steve responds, chancing a glance back at the pair. “I thought the dome would’ve destroyed this thing on impact.”

 

                The young queen nods. “It would have, yes, but the man who helps run this specific part of my defense system t-“ the queen winces and Steve feels his heart go out to the child. “-is unable to run it effectively at the moment.”

 

                “Is that a pressing issue?” Bruce asks.

 

                The girl shrugs. “I’ll get in running in no time. Besides…I’m not sure that discovering this place is anyone’s top priority right now.”

 

                Bruce purses his lips and accepts her words with silence, his hands palming nervously on his pants.

 

                Steve is too busy contemplating the queen’s words to notice that Rhodey has slipped out of his armor beside him. And he’s also too occupied to notice that a sharp gasp has escaped his lips. It takes Rhodey pushing harshly past Steve to actually get the Captain to notice that somebody else is emerging from the wreckage of the ship.

 

                Steve cannot make out any details on this new person limping from the wreck. One arm is thrown around Nebula’s shoulders and the other is wrapped around their torso, their hand pressing against a grisly wound in their side. Their head is hanging, and they’re covered in soot.

 

                Steve watches guardedly as Rhodey approaches the pair, his steps jagged as his supports work double-time. The super soldier makes a few steps towards the colonel, watching carefully as Nebula stops, the newcomer swaying on uneasy feet.

 

                Steve moves around to Rhodey’s side, giving the man a wide berth, but keeping a close eye on the unidentified soul. Something deep inside Steve’s belly twists and it feels as though a fog is being lifted from his brain. It’s only when Rhodey mutters “Tony?” under his breath that his soul seems to snap back into its rightful place, his heart wrenching and plummeting all the same.

 

                The person flinches and tries to raise their head, but it’s to no avail. They are too thoroughly exhausted to do anything more than stand and breathe.

 

                “Tony?” Rhodey tries again, this time stepping closer, taking the man out of the alien’s arms and into his own. The man doesn’t even really react aside from burying his head into his friend’s shoulder, bodily leaning against him. Rhodey says his name over and over again, becoming more and more unraveled as he sinks to the ground, carrying the Iron Man with him.

 

                “Tones, c’mon man. C’mon…” Steve almost turns away when Rhodey gathers Stark farther in his arms, and starts to rock, placing a feather-light kiss on his soot-stained forehead. “You’re home. You’re okay. You’re home.”

 

                Tony manages an intelligible mumble and nothing more. _Nevermore,_ a crow somewhere whispers. _Nevermore._

Steve takes a few steps closer, intending to assist Rhodey, but Bruce beats him to it, crashing down on his knees next to the pair. Steve stays back and watches as Bruce prods gently at Tony’s burned back and lacerated skin, Steve swallowing a whine of empathetic anguish when Tony winces at one particularly painful prod at his gored left side.

 

                “He’s lost a lot of blood,” Bruce is saying, though it’s starting to become hard for Steve to hear past the blood roaring in his ears and the guilt licking at his heart. “He’s in shock. We have to get him to medical.”

 

                “Is-“ Steve starts, then flinches as Rhodey starts to haul Tony to his feet again, the injured man hunched in a feeble attempt to ease his pain. “Is he going to be okay?”

 

                “God, I hope so,” is Bruce’s stressed response, hands ghosting over Tony’s shoulders should Rhodey need help. As soon as Tony gets to his feet, however, his body goes rigid. Steve can hear that his breathing has gotten thin and his heart has picked up speed.

 

                Then, Tony starts mumbling, the words low in his throat. Rhodey, Bruce, and Steve exchange confused looks. It’s not until the mumbling turns into a clear “no” over and over again that Steve’s heart freezes over, his skin tight and cold, like he was in the freezing ocean all over again.

 

                “Tony? Hey, hey, it’s okay. You’re safe, I promise,” Rhodey comforts and Steve looks away when Tony shakes his head lethargically.

 

                When Steve hears his name fall from Tony’s lips is officially when the dam that he’s hastily built to contain his emotions crumbles.

 

                “Yes, Tony?” Steve sniffs, his own voice barely a whisper.

 

                “Please don’t leave me here,” is Tony’s withered response. “’s cold. I- I won’t be able to…home. Get home…”

 

                It takes Steve a moment to catch onto what Tony is pleading for and when Steve finally understands that Tony’s eyes are set at a different time in the universe, two years in the past, uneasy bodies tensed inside a Soviet bunker, _nice to see you, Cap_ and _he killed my mom_ echoing through the howling of a blizzard, he turns around and vomits into the grass, tremors sliding up and down his spine.

 

                He thinks that Tony says his name again, this time his voice cracking into a near sob, but Steve’s too busy trying to not choke on the bile in his throat to acknowledge him. Steve feels a hand on his shoulder as he collapses to his knees, hearing Natasha’s quiet voice in his ear, though he can’t make heads nor tails what she’s saying.

 

                The spell passes quickly enough and once Steve’s sure his stomach is settled, he sits back on his heels, wiping at strands of spit and bile that hang to his lips and beard with the back of his shaking hand. He feels Natasha’s hands at his shoulders, trying to get him up on his feet.

 

                “C’mon, Steve,” she’s coaxing, moving one of her hands to his wet hair, gently threading her fingers through it. “Get up. We have to help Tony.”

 

                Steve looks up at her face and the blatant nervousness and desperation on her face is chilling. Her eyes are wide and her soaked, blonde hair is framing her cheeks, making her look pale. Steve nods and stands, using Natasha’s grasp on his biceps for balance before he turns and looks back to the ship and its previous pair of occupants.

                He startles for a second when he doesn’t see them immediately, but a glance up the grassland, back towards the house, back towards the Dora Milaje waiting for them, he sees Rhodey and Bruce struggling along with a limp Tony wrapped between their bodies. The blue alien is lagging, her gaze dead-set on Rocket and Thor, both of which still mourning in the grass.

 

                 Steve releases a shuddering sigh and starts to follow the slow-moving crew, motioning for Natasha, Thor, and Rocket to follow. They comply, though their gazes are haunted with the memories of things lost and things changed.

 

                Steve watches as Rhodey and Bruce struggle to get Tony up aboard one of the gliders waiting for them at the edge of the grassland and he decides to rush up and help. His feet pound on the wet grass as he pulls up behind the trio, hands out by Tony’s back. Rhodey shoots a startled look back at Rogers, before recognizing his intentions. Rhodey motions minutely to Bruce who, after a momentary lapse, moves away from Tony’s side, Steve promptly replacing him. Steve wraps his arm under both of Tony’s, gaining full control over the billionaire’s upper half as Rhodey migrates down to Tony’s hips and legs. Placing a free hand on the small of Tony’s back, Steve wordlessly signals to Rhodey and they lift, Tony groaning and trying to curl up in response. Steve grimaces at the sight, using his torso and the hand around the man’s shoulders to squeeze Tony close, preventing his shoulders and chest from coming up.

 

                Tony’s eyes fly open and his mouth opens in a silent gasp as Rhodey twists his hips a little too far as he moves onto the glider, definitely wrenching the wound in Tony’s side.

 

                “Fuck, _fuck_ , I’m sorry Tones, I’m-“ Rhodey is saying, trying to get his closest friend on board as comfortably as possible. It takes a few more seconds of gentle maneuvering before the three of them are on board, and seated, Tony’s body strewn across both Steve and Rhodey’s laps, his breaths coming out in short gasps. The rest of the Avengers and the Dora Milaje clamber on the gliders and it’s no time before they’re speeding back to the city, the wet, humid air whipping through Steve’s hair.

 

                As gently as he can, Rhodey strips his jacket and presses it against Tony’s left side, eliciting another hiss of pain from the man across their laps.

               

                “I know, Tony, I know it sucks,” Rhodey says, his other hand finding one of Tony’s and squeezing it tightly. Steve is relieved to see Tony’s hand squeeze back in response. “You’ll be fine. You’ll be fine.”

 

                Steve swallows, his throat and tongue still tasting like hydrochloric acid, looking down at Tony’s face in the low light. It’s pale, certainly, a terrifying contrast to his usual dark olive skin, his dark eyelashes stark against his cheeks. His lips are wet and red, slick with the blood that occasionally finds its way out of his mouth. He has copious cuts across his face and neck, none of them life-threatening, but all of them deep and bleeding. Steve thinks there might be shrapnel, god forbid, protruding from various parts on his body, shoulders and clavicle primarily.

 

The most haunting thing about the whole scene, oddly enough, is the arc reactor that’s sitting brightly in the center of Tony’s chest. The object is bright, nearly blinding in the oncoming twilight. The thing washes Tony out, pulsing like an unforgiving heartbeat and humming like the longing coos of mourning doves- it looks like the final stretch of the will of a bleeding soul. Steve wishes momentarily that he could tear it out, so the dreadful thing couldn’t touch its host anymore; couldn’t suck the life out of him like the parasite it seems to emulate.

 

But he will not touch it. He will not. Because last time he did, it ended with Tony laying beneath him like submissive, hunted prey, blood bubbling in his throat and dark eyes wide with fear and loss and guilt. The image haunts Steve in a visceral, terrifying way and he wishes to god that he could take it back. He wishes he could look into Tony’s eyes and see life and challenge and ingenuity and not be stuck with his eyes blown with fear and pain and surrender.

 

That’s the moment that Steve snaps back into reality; he’s looking right into Tony’s open eyes; the dark irises are ignite with the cold light of the arc reactor. Tony stares at Steve dead in the face, familiarity peeking through his protective veneer in a way that’s devastatingly wary. Tony visibly, nervously, and painfully swallows, and looks away from Steve, a clear gesture of capitulation. It nearly makes Steve sick again.

 

““Wh-where’s…where’s Rhodey?” he whispers with a slow, tired blink

 

“I’m right here, Tones,” Rhodey says, squeezing Tony’s hand again.

 

Tony immediately relaxes, huffing a breath of relief. “O…okay. Good. Th-th-thank god I didn’t…I didn’t lose you too.”

“Too?” Steve can’t help but question and he bites his tongue when the word leaves his mouth. Too. Of course, he lost someone. Who hadn’t?

 

“Rhodey,” Tony says again, lifting his head, trying to see his friend at his feet. He doesn’t make it very far before it falls back down onto Steve’s thigh, rolling with the movements of the glider.

 

Tony suddenly chokes and Steve startles, hands reaching for Tony’s jaw, ready to guide his head sideways to cough out whatever was clogging his trachea. Once Steve’s hands meet the skin of Tony’s face, however, he feels that it’s cool and clammy and wet with tears. _Tony isn’t choking_ , Steve realizes with a stomach full of dread _. He’s trying not to cry._

_He’s trying not to shatter._

 

“Pete…Peter,” Tony gasps, his stomach muscles visibly rolling under Rhodey’s hands as his grief begins to unfold. The motions look painful, but Steve’s nearly positive that Tony doesn’t care.

 

“What- Tony what about Peter?” Rhodey responds, though by the wrenched look on his face, Steve’s pretty sure that the colonel realizes what Tony means a little too late.

 

“Fell,” Tony whispers, small breaths hitching. With some effort, Tony raises his hands, one still tightly grasping Rhodey’s own fingers. In the bright light of the arc reactor, Steve can see that Tony’s hands are filthy, dark dirt and sand caking his palms and underneath his fingernails. “He fell thr- through…fell through my hands.”

 

Tony clenches his free fist and Steve can see the silent tears on Stark’s face, the droplets glistering like silver in the blue-white light. “He was so- so scared and I couldn’t save- it’s all my fault.”

 

“No, Tony, no,” the colonel says in a voice that’s stern and soft all the same. Steve notices that Rhodey grips his friend’s hand harder. “Tony this isn’t your fault.”

 

“It should’ve been me.”

 

“Tony-“

 

“I wish it had been me,” is the last thing that Tony says before his eyes roll back into his head and his mouth goes slack. Steve’s heart plummets and he suddenly feels lightheaded and queasy again as he feels the muscles of Tony’s face uncoil beneath his palms.

 

“Bruce!” Steve yells over the whipping wind, rotating his head, desperately trying to catch sight of the scientist. Thankfully, Bruce is only a few seats behind them and even more thankfully, the gliders are slowing as they near a sleek building just on the outer edge of the city, the word ‘ _esibhedlele’_ on the side of the building in bold font.

 

Bruce carefully and quickly makes his way over to the trio as the gliders slow to a halt, Thor at his heels. Bruce produces a penlight from his breast pocket and leans over Tony, opening one of his eyes with a thumb and forefinger. He shines the light on it for about a second, moves to the second one, and then pockets the light again.

 

“Dilated,” Bruce says, reaching for Tony’s wrist next, pressing two fingers against the pulse point. “He’s on a narcotic, according to Nebula, so I’m hoping that’s that and not shock.”

 

He then shakes his head, chewing the bottom of his lip. “Even if it’s a narcotic, we’ll have to keep an eye on that.”

 

Steve isn’t entirely sure what Bruce is implying, but he doesn’t ask.

 

“We also need to get some antifibrinolytics in him- make sure he doesn’t bleed to death. His BPM’s a little high.”

 

  “I can assist in lifting him, Banner,” Thor says, staring at Tony in a sad, sympathetic way. Steve nods as well.

 

Bruce hesitates and shakes his head. “You can help carry him off this ship, but he needs to be stabilized on a gurney as fast as possible. Oh, and speak of the devil-“ Bruce finishes as he looks back towards the hospital, a crew of emergency personnel making their way to the glider, pushing a grey, levitating gurney in front of them.

 

 With careful hands and slow movements, both Thor and Steve manage to lift Tony into their arms and bring him down and off the glider, settling him as comfortably as they can on the flat, grey surface of the gurney. As the back of Tony’s head touches the surface of the gurney, a halo of blue lights illuminates on the grey material, numbers and lists materializing in a language that Steve cannot understand.

 

Steve and Thor back away, Bruce and, surprisingly, Shuri taking their places. The young queen and the scientist exchange quick words before Shuri walks towards the medical building, the caretakers hot on her heels. Bruce scrambles after them, one hand on Tony’s leg.

 

Within moments, they’re gone, vanished inside the modern, white building. Despite Thor at Steve’s side, with Natasha, Rhodey, Rocket, Nebula, and the rest of the Dora Milaje at his back, Steve feels just as alone as he felt when he woke up seventy years in the future.

 

The cheers of the baseball game playing on the radio are replaced with the haunting howls of Tony’s mourning gasps.

 

\---

 

He wakes up. That’s problem number one.

 

He’s in a tremendous amount of pain. That’s problem number two.

 

Steve is sitting in the chair next to his bed. Tony can’t decide if that’s problem number three or a way to solve problems one and/or two. He’s not picky.

 

Tony closes his barely opened eyes before Steve can notice and grimaces at the pounding in his head and the pulsing through his abdomen. He can smell and hear and feel the oppressive air of hospital around him and it’s all he has not to release a sigh building in his aching chest.

 

Thankfully, the lights are off and the curtains are drawn, leaving the only light source as the arc reactor and just the natural light that manages to seep through the curtains. He tries to alleviate problem one by attempting to let sleep take him again, but his body is just so full of heavy, uncomfortable, leaden pain that he has no choice but to draw attention to his lucidity and ask for more painkillers. He hopes, distantly, that he really does need them and it’s not just his brain pining for them.

 

 _I really am going to OD on the bathroom floor, huh,_ he thinks to himself, though the thought isn’t too startling. _I fucking called it._

Whatever. He decides he can spend the next three months weaning off the narcotics as long as he gets as much as he can as fast as possible right now.

 

It takes a lot of effort for him to open his eyes again and when he does, he notices that Steve is looking right at him, his brow furrowed. The moment Steve realizes that Tony is lucid, his expression morphs into something sad, pitying, and guarded. And it pisses Tony off.

 

“Tony?” Steve tries gently, leaning forward ever so slightly. Tony responds by shifting himself backwards, away from Steve in a way that’s subtle, but jarring all the same.

 

Tony watches as hurt blooms in Steve’s face, but it’s quickly covered by the same sympathetic stare as a few moments ago. “You awake?”

 

“No,” Tony can’t help but snap, though the sound is weak and hoarse in his throat. “I sleep with my eyes open.”

 

“Sorry,” Steve says, and he actually does look sorry which makes Tony pause. “You’ve been in and out of it for a few days…”

 

It sounds like Steve wants to say more, but he doesn’t, and he looks down at the floor instead.

 

“Oh,” Tony says, and silence befalls them for a few long moments.

 

Tony suddenly remembers why he had even gotten Rogers’ attention in the first place. “Hey, uh, can you shoot me up real quick? Or, I guess get a doctor to do it, so I don’t go into shock and die.”

 

“Shoot you- what?” Steve actually pales a little and his voice shakes. Tony blinks a handful of times before his brain realizes what he said and how he said it. Tony manages a quiet, pained chuckle, and Steve’s complexion somehow gets whiter.

 

“Morphine, Rogers,” Tony clarifies, watching the tension melt out of the captain’s shoulders ever so slightly. “It feels like I got run over by a goddamn truck.”

 

“O-oh,” Rogers breathes, running a hand through his hair. His body is still painfully rigid, and it makes Tony a little nervous. “I thought you meant- I…I don’t know. Sorry.”

 

Tony raises his eyebrows. “You thought I was asking you to kill me? Not this time, Rogers. Besides, you missed your chance two years ago anyways, so-“

 

The words dangle in the air, Tony watching as Steve’s gaze hardened in realization and softened into something that wasn’t entirely guilt, but something deeper and more potent. “I never wanted to kill you, Tony.”

 

“Sure.”

 

“No, Tony, really. I- I would never.”

 

“You came real fucking close though,” Tony growls, his chest wrenching with cold memories. “You broke my suit and left me there. Tell me- did you even look back? Did the thought of ‘hey, maybe I should at least give him a radio or something to call for help’ even cross your mind? Please tell me, because I want to be able to determine if you’re lying to me or not. Again.”

 

Tony expects Steve’s eyes to harden in challenge, like they always did whenever Tony prodded him. But when his gaze remains soft and morose and sad, it makes the ire die in Tony’s chest, leaving him just as hollow and just as empty as he felt on Titan.

 

“It didn’t, did it,” Tony huffs, not a trace of a question in his tone. He turns his head so he’s looking at the ceiling, praying to whatever god was there that the threatening tears wouldn’t give him away. “You really never did care, huh.”

 

“Tony, please, that’s not true,” Steve insists, shuffling restlessly on the cheap chair beside Tony. “Let me-“

 

“No, it’s fine,” Tony says. “Really. Fuck. I shouldn’t have been surprised. Nobody ever stays.”

 

“Tony!” Steve says sharply, and the tone actually makes Tony painfully tense, his gaze whipping back over to Steve, shoulders hunched protectively and eyes low on Steve’s face.

 

 _Fuck this, so much,_ Tony thinks, trying to make himself stare Steve in the face, like he’s always done. But his body remains defiant, determined to not piss Rogers off even more. It’s some sort of primal, defensive mechanism that locks his body into a fight-or-flight position, protecting his body from further harm: body tense, eyes low. It’s all born of years of abuse; born of people with alcoholic mouths and heavy hands; born of people with slow, drawling vernacular and hyena teeth; born of people with lying tongues and alligator jaws.

 

He screws his eyes shut, cursing his festering brain. _Fuck this._

 

“Oh, no, I didn’t mean- _shit_ , Tony, I- I didn’t mean to scare you,” Steve stammers. “I just- I can’t sit here and listen to you talk like that.”

 

Tony shakes his head, but doesn’t try to speak. He’s certain that if he does, the dam will break, and Pandora’s box will open, spilling his sins like a goddamn oil spill. He can’t even open his eyes.

 

“Tony,” Steve repeats in a voice so soft that it makes Tony’s dam quake dangerously. “I- I am so sorry for what I did. And as much as I’d love for you to forgive me, I completely understand if you won’t. Hell, I think I’d be surprised if you do. I just-“ Steve takes a breath and when he speaks again, Tony can tell Steve is as close to tears as he is. “-I just want you to stop hurting so much. I want to do everything in my power to try and alleviate that pain.”

 

“Then get me morphine, Rogers, goddammit,” Tony snaps and he’s not sure if he meant it as a joke or not.

 

“You know what I mean, ass,” Steve says. Tony tries to find warmth in the name-calling, but there’s none there. But there’s no angry heat either.

 

Tony sighs and opens his eyes, tears streaming from them when he does. He stares Rogers in the eyes and forces his gaze to stay, even through the blurriness of tears. “It’s over, Rogers,” he chokes. “Thanos won. I have nothing left to give.”

 

“You have everything left to give,” Steve frowns. “You’re _here.”_

 

“Maybe I’m just tired of giving, Rogers,” Tony breathes. Steve’s frown deepens and his Adam’s apple bobs. “I’ve given so much and it’s always come back to bite me in the ass. There’s nothing good in anything I do. It just ends up hurting the people I care about and it drives them away.”

 

Steve just keeps looking at him with a perplexed glare, as if the words make zero sense inside his head. “Wh- Tony that’s not true, I-“

 

“Tell me-“ Tony snaps over Steve’s words. “-tell me if you regret it.”

 

Steve’s eyes are wide with confusion. “Regret? Tony, I-“ Tony can see when the question snaps behind Rogers’ eyes because he quickly cuts himself off, his eyes suddenly growing very sad again.

 

“Of course I regret how it all turned out,” Steve murmurs. “If I could, I’d change it in an instant.”

 

“You regret how it _turned out_ ,” Tony emphasizes. “But you don’t regret anything that led to it.”

 

The stunned and shamed silence that covers Steve’s tongue like a blanket is enough of an answer.

 

“You were always going to be in Barnes’ corner.” Tony’s voice is quiet and pained again, the whispered words like the final nail in the coffin. “Until death do you in, huh.”

 

“You make it sound like it was an easy decision,” Steve accuses. “It was an impossible decision.”

 

“Well, obviously it wasn’t, because you made one.”

 

Steve stares at him for a few long seconds, chewing on his lips before he turns away, his hands fidgeting together. “I never wanted you dead, Tony. I never wanted to hurt you like that. And- and no matter how much I apologize, I will never be able to even scratch the surface of how sorry I am.”

 

The soft-spoken words coupled by the tears welling in the man’s eyes makes something in Tony’s chest relax and sink. It’s not an uplifting, good feeling, but it sinks deep inside Tony’s core and sticks.

 

“I know,” Tony says, more tears gracing his cheeks. “I wish it hadn’t ended up like this.”

 

“Could you- could you ever forgive me, Tony? Would you ever be able to- to trust me again?” Steve’s words are slow and unsure, tinted with a slight glow of hope that Tony can tell Steve doesn’t want to attach to.

 

Tony’s first instinct is to tell him _no._ No, he could never forgive him for keeping his parents’ true death a secret and no, he could never forgive him for leaving him in a dead suit in Siberia. He can still feel the cold chattering his teeth and the blood clogging his nose and throat, making it hard to breathe. He can still feel the weight on his hips as Steve straddles him, arms raised with the shield gripped between gloved hands. He can feel more than hear himself yelling after Rogers and then feeling the metallic clang of a dropped shield hitting the frozen concrete.

 

The betrayal still smells hot in his nose and Steve’s gentle gaze feels misleading, like Tony’s stepping closer to his doom, like a noose is ready to choke him out and hang him by the limb of a tree. He’s not ready to face death in the face again.

 

Yinsen still feels far away.

 

“Steve,” Tony says, and he hates the way that Rogers’ face lights up. “I’m sorry, I- I can’t. I want to but-“ Tony swallows, his chest twinging in response to what he’s about to admit. “-I’m…I’m _scared_ of you. I’m scared that once I get close enough to you, you’ll tear the rug out from under me again.”

 

The light vanishes from Steve’s face and he purses his lips, nodding once, solemnly.

 

 

“I’m sorry, Steve,” Tony says. “But I can’t do that to us. I can’t handle going through that again.”

 

“I’m sorry, Tony,” Steve whispers. “I’m so so sorry…”

 

“One day,” Tony promises emptily, hopefully, praying that it will actually come true. “One day, I think we’ll be okay.”

 

Steve smiles, but it’s just as empty as Tony’s promise.

 

\---

 

                _It’s nearly a week later when something clicks inside Tony’s brain as one of Wakanda’s nurses is replacing the gauze on the wound in his side. He quickly calls for Rhodey, who stumbles in worriedly. Tony’s close friend pauses at the sight of Tony, who’s eyes are alight with something the colonel has not seen in a long time._

_“Honey,” Tony says breathlessly, like he’s just run a marathon. “I might have an idea.”_

_“For what, Tones?” Rhodey responds, a small, but hopeful smirk on his lips._

_Something in Tony’s eyes breaks and his gaze becomes wet, but this time, the tears are fueled with hope and relief. “For taking our universe back.”_

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Comment any mistakes or edits I should make (aside from that weird fuckin indent thing?? no idea what that shit is)  
> Also, not sure why Edgar Allan Poe was on my mind when I wrote this, but I felt it.


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